Re: How Italy's 'clothes system' works

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:44:49 -0700, poldy <poldy@xxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <j9ora391qaoiukbul9ha0blsbcphpud5ls@xxxxxxx>,
The Reid <mikereidclothing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

to be honest, of the countries I've been to, Italy seems *very*
conscious of dress. I reckon its much more common there that a lot of
countries. That's my impression.

Maybe because fashion and textiles are big industries?

There was a recent article about how a country like Germany was doing
better in the last couple of years because of industries which made
specialized equipment like certain kinds of pumps and other machinery
which isn't vulnerable to competition from China.

Meanwhile, Southern European countries like Italy wasn't doing as well
because key industries like textiles were dealing with competition from
the Far East.

There's a textile factory around here that has stopped making textiles
and now designs specialized programmable machines that do things like
sew pockets on jeans. They sell them in Asia and South America.

The textile factory began in someone's garage in the 1950s or 60s with
some housewives and a few sewing machines, who made special order
clothing for boutiques in Milan. They've certainly adapted with the
times.




The other part of that was that the depreciation of the dollar vs. the
Euro was hurting sales of high-priced items like Zegna suits which
American tourists often splurged on while visiting Italy.

--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup
.